Associative Learning under Uncertainty in Adults with Autism: Intact Learning of the Cue-Outcome Contingency, but Slower Updating of Priors

Autor/inn/en	Sapey-Triomphe, Laurie-Anne; Weilnhammer, Veith A.; Wagemans, Johan
Titel	Associative Learning under Uncertainty in Adults with Autism: Intact Learning of the Cue-Outcome Contingency, but Slower Updating of Priors
Quelle	In: Autism: The International Journal of Research and Practice, 26 (2022) 5, S.1216-1228 (13 Seiten) PDF als Volltext Verfügbarkeit
Zusatzinformation	ORCID (Sapey-Triomphe, Laurie-Anne)
Sprache	englisch
Dokumenttyp	gedruckt; online; Zeitschriftenaufsatz
ISSN	1362-3613
DOI	10.1177/13623613211045026
Schlagwörter	Autism Spectrum Disorders; Cues; Adults; Expectation; Associative Learning; Self Efficacy; Auditory Stimuli; Visual Stimuli; Prediction + Suchen Sie Ihr Suchwort? Autism; Autismus; Stichwort; Expectancy; Erwartung; Self-efficacy; Selbstwirksamkeit; Auditive Stimulation; Vorhersage
Abstract	Predictive coding theories of autism suggest that symptoms could result from an atypical learning of expectations. We assessed whether adults with autism could learn expectations in an uncertain context. Twenty-nine neurotypicals and 25 autistic adults participated in an associative learning task. After hearing a tone, participants had to predict the rotation direction of a dot pair, and to report what they perceived. There was a probabilistic association between the tone and the rotation direction. This association could reverse within a block. Both groups were biased by their expectations, as they reported perceiving a rotation consistent with the contingency in a subset of ambiguous trials where the dots did not rotate. Participants made predictions above chance level, but contrary to neurotypicals, autistic participants updated their prior expectation less after a change in contingency. Computational modeling revealed a smaller influence of associative learning on perceptual expectations in the autism group. In an additional task, participants reported how confident they were about their percepts. Both groups expressed confidence in relation to the stimuli, but certainty ratings reflected response times in neurotypical participants only. These findings, showing a more inflexible adjustment of priors in autism, should help refining the predictive coding hypotheses of autism. (As Provided).
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Erfasst von	ERIC (Education Resources Information Center), Washington, DC
Update	2024/1/01